The St. Joseph County Health Department has been spraying for mosquitoes this week in Mishawaka to combat the West Nile virus. The department says they’re doing it safely.
On Monday the health department announced their spraying plans on Facebook, drawing some safety concerns from residents and some confusion about where they’re spraying. The post only said that they’re spraying Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights over a square mile area in Penn Township, which covers most of Mishawaka, and the same in Portage Township, which covers most of South Bend.
Doing the spraying is Lelia Burley-Sanford, the health department’s vector environmental health specialist. She says she sprayed Monday and Tuesday nights near Mishawaka’s wastewater treatment plant, where they’ve found mosquitoes with West Nile, and she plans to spray near South Bend’s plant next week because of rain in the forecast the next two nights.
“It was a recommendation from the state to not disclose where we found positive pools but I’m finding that to be problematic," Burley-Sanford says. "People want to know where we’re spraying and I understand that concern.”
Burley-Sanford says she’s spraying chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate that some states, but not Indiana, have banned because of its toxicity. She says she’s only spraying when it’s dark. Tuesday night she sprayed in Mishawaka from about 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.
“There’s a ULV machine mounted in the back of the truck and then that disperses tiny little particles into the air. The amount that I’m using, they say it’s like a shot glass for a football field. So it’s a very small amount compared to like crops or something like that. That being said, it is in the air so you have to go 10 mph the whole entire time you’re driving and I turn my sprayer off if I see anyone present, right, so that’s where it can take a lot longer if people are out because I’m going to have to continuously turn my sprayer off and then I have to go back to that area to treat it when there’s no one present.”
